Delirium Trigger
by Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth
Summary: After Assault. Something new is born out of Peppy. And Krystal's secret might change everything. Rated for maybe frightening graphic stuff, and language. Chapters 1 and 2 revised, chapter 4 up.
1. Chapter 1

**Delirium Trigger**

A rogue infant aparoid queen, long dormant, finds itself in the new Great Fox and does what it does best: it evolves…

This is set, clearly, a while after StarFox Assault. It's important that I go right into the story, so I apologize if the background seemed vague.

This chapter is meant to go with the song of the same name, by Coheed and Cambria. They're an amazing band. I highly recommend hearing the actual song, as the music itself goes to the same theme.

_Oh dear God, I don't feel alive!_

_When you're cut short of misery…_

_Will you pray it be the end?_

Coheed and Cambria, _Delirium Trigger_

**Chapter 1**

A nearly inaudible hum settled over the interior of the Great Fox II as ROB employed the scanners set over the rooms to run his nightly medical diagnostics.

The avian slept, as he always had since his return to the team, with a blaster under the pillow and an increased pulse. The motion sensors showed evidence of his fitful sleep, as his comfort lay discarded somewhere in the sheets that had been kicked off in the midst of whatever haunted Falco's subconscious.

The amphibian slept peacefully and without incident.

The hare appeared more relaxed than any of them. Perhaps it was the relief spreading all the way through the tips of the fur in his lanky ears that they had finally gotten a period of rest between missions, and everything was all right despite the threat of the aparoids.

The two vulpines, he saw, were doing fine. A slight anomaly in Krystal's readouts caused ROB to pause for an instant. He studied them more carefully. Could it be…?

Suddenly there was an intense spike on all of Peppy's charts. ROB's attention snapped hurriedly back to him, activating the emergency video receptors placed around the room. Peppy had convulsed violently in his sleep.

Peppy's eyes opened sharply and were coated in stinging tears for a moment as he desperately tried to focus his attention. There was a sudden ache in his chest. Was he having a heart attack?

But the pain receded and Peppy's brain slowly unclenched, falling back into very uneasy unconsciousness. His subconscious fired off an image pieced together from Peppy's imagination, and the hare's tired eyes suddenly saw his stomach burst open in an avalanche of his own insides as something erupted out of him…

Peppy became awake again, clawing at his stomach, then relaxing as he saw the closed skin.

ROB, meanwhile, had activated the speakers, vocalizing in his broken intonation. "Peppy. Sensors indicate discomfort and possible illness. How do you feel?"

"I feel…" Peppy wheezed, then coughed as his lungs felt dirty. "I'm all right, ROB. Just, I…" He coughed again. His lungs didn't just feel dirty, they felt like they were being shoved aside. His body was wracked suddenly.

The tiniest movement under the skin and fur on Peppy's stomach caught ROB's vision immediately. He opened a channel to Fox's room.

"Fox. Peppy requires assistance that I cannot provide. You must transport him to Corneria."

Fox's eyes shot open. He pulled himself out of the bed, scratching his back. "What kind of assistance?"

"Peppy appears to be infected."

"Infected by what?"

A few minutes later, Fox had dashed into Peppy's room, waking Falco and Slippy, as he carried the old hare into the Great Fox II's lackluster medical wing. He laid Peppy out on an operating table as ROB came in, having been quickly sterilized.

Peppy's coughing had receded for the moment. He opened his eyes with an effort, seeing Fox and the others waiting there. His voice was dry and rasping. "Fox…"

The McCloud boy's eyes snapped to Peppy. "What is it, old friend?"

"That… time. When I crashed the first Fox to open the way. With the aparoids."

Fox nodded.

"I… one of them… got inside."

The vulpine's fur rippled as he shuddered. "What happened to it, Peppy?"

"I couldn't tell. Thought I killed it. But now, I think—" He broke off into another sudden fit of coughing. ROB noticed the pulse at his stomach again.

"I think it got—" Peppy could speak no further. He seized up again. And now even Fox, Slippy and Falco saw the growing protrusion on the hare's belly.

Fox carefully placed his paw on Peppy's sweaty forehead, waiting for the coughing fit to subside. Gradually, it did. "Listen to me, Peppy. Did the aparoid… infect you?"

Peppy's eyes locked onto Fox's, and there Fox could see a mix of fear, of sadness, and surprise. Peppy nodded slowly. A small trickle of blood made its way out of Peppy's navel.

Falco spoke almost hesitantly. "Fox. I have the blaster. Should I—"

"_No._" Fox cut him off. "Any chance Peppy has we're going to give him. We can't lose him after all he did for us."

Falco sighed and nodded. But he switched the safety off.

Peppy was no longer twitching, but the lump under his stomach was pulsing. The old hare's eyes glazed over. Only ROB knew the moment the hare gave out, but it was long before the aparoid queen burst out of Peppy's stomach and shot off into the shadows—before Falco even had a chance to fire. Before the dazzling red bolt flashed into the operating table, singing Peppy's lysed body.

Fox whirled around and snarled, baring his teeth. "_Lombardi!_"

Falco turned his wrist, pointing the gun under the vulpine's muzzle. "Easy, Fox. We have an _aparoid_ loose on the ship. Do you remember what those things can do?"

The door opened, and Falco and Fox forgot their anger and turned toward it. Fox drew his own blaster and edged toward the door, looking around the corner.

ROB's head swiveled on its axis and pointed through the wall. "Fox. Unidentified intruder is attempting to force access to Krystal's room."

A growl bubbled out of Fox's throat as he tore out of the room, hurtling down the corridors that seemed years too long.

His breath became short and ragged as the metal floor was merciless to his legs. He finally reached Krystal's open room and dashed inside, stopping to see the Cerinian vulpine still sleeping.

He edged over and laid a hand on her shoulder, pointing the blaster around the room. "Krys!" he hissed through his teeth.

She didn't move, but under his hand he could feel her pulse and breathing change. She was awake and listening silently.

"There's something in here. I don't know where it is. But we need to get out of here now. Climb on my back and we'll run."

He turned, still scanning the room, and felt her noiselessly climb onto his back.

The door slid shut.

Fox cursed loudly and Krystal tightened her grip around him. He squeezed off a blaster shot into the door control panel, hoping it would somehow hotwire it or something. He really had no idea what he was doing.

All he knew was that he and the girl he loved were trapped in a very small room with a very lethal alien.

There was a thud from the opposite corner. Fox turned and shot by reflex. There was nothing there anymore, except that the blaster shot just for a moment illuminated a shed skin.

Fox backed up into the wall and pounded on the door with his free hand. "Slip! Falco!" he roared. "Get me the fck out of here!"

Falco and ROB were desperately working at the door from the other side as Slippy dashed off to the armory. "Hang on, dammit!" Falco grunted as sweat trickled down his forehead.

Fox heard another noise and fired. This time the shot lit up a small figure. From the brief moment of light, Fox could see glistening, sharp teeth and… long, floppy ears?

The door shot open. Fox stumbled backward and Krystal let go of him, drawing her staff. A shadow dashed towards them. Fox raised his blaster and Falco and ROB shut and locked the door. There was a thud from inside.

Fox's blaster slipped from his sweaty hand. His knees buckled from under him and Krystal caught him, holding him up by his underarms.

Krystal's adrenaline rush faded and her brain began to pick up signals from her nerves. Something was erupting inside the pit of her stomach. Something sickly and warm…

She doubled over, holding herself tightly as hot bile gushed out of her muzzle, leaving a bitter taste and chunks of her own meal in her mouth. The thought of what she was doing triggered her gag reflex and she vomited again, as the spreading puddle reached her feet and the others leaped out of the way.

Fox, now with his paws soaked in vomit, allowed his brain to unclench its grip on his consciousness…

-End of chapter-

All right. I have a few ways this story could go in my mind, and I'm not sure which I'll pick yet. I just hope you guys like. And yes, I will explain the thing with Krystal later.


	2. Chapter 2

**Delirium Trigger**

I'd like to note that as I write this I am in general feeling depressed, and listening to a beautiful but sad song, i.e. The Light and the Glass, by Coheed and Cambria. Forgive me if this chapter is… melancholy. But, well, it's not a happy story anyway.

And the ground starts parting through the silence as you woke up the dead 

Coheed and Cambria: _The Faint of Hearts_

Chapter 2 

"Wake up, asshole."

Those words drifted through the creamy blur that was Fox's vision. Shapes with fuzzy edges coalesced and evanesced in his eyes. For a minute, Fox desperately searched his memory, his first thought being that he was severely high and that Krystal was going to kill him.

Then the sharp toe of Falco's boot knocked on the door of Fox's consciousness. The inhabitant turned the knob grouchily and listened to the boot rattle off a list of reasons why he should really be up and running. He closed the door again.

Falco gave an exasperated grunt and shoved his rear talon into Fox's stomach. Fox doubled up into a sitting position, coughing for a moment and glaring daggers at Falco. "All right… what's going on?"

Falco gestured with his blaster at the door, which Fox's memory struggled to identify. "It found a way out."

It? What was it? Wasn't that Krys's room? What was…

No. Oh, fcking _Venom_.

Fox got up in a hurry and looked around, digging into his tongue with his sharper teeth to keep himself awake and focused. "How?"

ROB, who was carrying a now unconscious Krystal in his metallic arms, took over the explanation. "My visual data receptors have reported that the aparoid bears a strong resemblance to Peppy Hare."

Slippy spoke without looking around from the panel he was doing something Fox didn't understand to. "The aparoid worked like a virus—a bacteriophage. It injected samples of its DNA into some of Peppy's cells. That lay dormant for a long time, but every time Peppy's cells reproduced the offspring contained parts of the aparoid's structure. Eventually something triggered the cells to start coding based on the aparoid DNA. The cells using it formed the structure of a baby queen—that's the only reason I could think of it's alive, since the other aparoid hive mind was dead."

Fox nodded impatiently. "I remember my biology classes," he lied with a straight face. "What does this have to do with looking like Peppy?"

"Well… remember, the cells were originally Peppy's. So I suppose there was an error somewhere—maybe all the heat Peppy was surrounded by when the aparoids attacked caused some damage to the genetic structure. Anyway, the cells that created the aparoid also had the… programming… to make the structure, in some ways at least, resemble Peppy."

Fox allowed this to settle in and guessed the implications. "So it used a voiceprint to try and unlock the door?"

Falco nodded, gesturing to unmistakable scorch marks around the doorframe. "We had to force it back in and seal the door shut. The only way to deal was to delete Peppy's voiceprint from ROB's memory."

Fox took a deep breath, allowing himself to close his eyes. _Say goodbye, old friend._ His last link to his father…gone.

"You all right, Fox?" Falco had a rare tone of worry in his voice. Clearly, no one wanted the leader to black out again.

Fox opened his eyes, looking with renewed venom at the door and imagining the creature behind it. "Yeah, I'm good."

In truth, his mind was wandering back to the very last time he and Peppy had spoken of James McCloud.

It was a little while after Fox's mostly solo affair on the planet Sauria. Fox had confessed his admittedly fairly obvious feelings for Krystal to Peppy…

_"Do you think she's the kind of girl… you know…"_

_Peppy looked sideways at Fox. "The kind of girl your dad would've liked?"_

_Fox nodded, resting his chin in his paws. Speaking about James was still painful, even to Peppy. Especially to Peppy in a way—Fox almost felt jealous at times that Peppy had been there when James died, as Fox could still do nothing._

_Peppy gave the sigh that old men give when they are finally asked to impart the sage advice they have been cultivating since they could be known as old men. "Well, Fox, if I know James… and I did, believe you me… I think he would have thought Krystal was great. You and she seem to fit in a way. Kinda like a jigsaw puzzle, if you get my meaning. But you know, even if she wasn't, James believed in your decisions. He saw himself in you, Fox. He knew one day you would grow up to be a fox who could make his own important decisions, and he would have trusted you as he trusted himself."_

_Fox let his brain absorb this. So basically, his father would have approved of Krystal no matter what._

_"It's your own decision to make, Fox." Peppy stood up and began to clear his tray. Before he left the mess room, he looked back over his shoulder. "But don't always feel as if James is glaring over your shoulder. If he is watching with you, it's not with malice. It's with pride."_

Fox faded back into reality. The other three were all watching at him. ROB's metallic visage was, as always, impassive. Slippy looked concerned.

In Falco's face… was it possible? Did he show a measure of pity? Fox looked directly into Falco's eyes, and with a look the blue avian gave him the respect that one gives to a fellow soldier fallen on a battlefield. The respect that comes with understanding, that comes with the situation. The fortunes of war.

The moment passed slowly. Falco looked away to the door and Fox slowly walked off to the medical quarters, where Krystal had been delivered.

Inside a sterilized room that had been abandoned in the heat of the moment, Peppy's feeble heart pumped a measure of blood through his veins. The hare almost choked on his breath as it suddenly jerked back into existence.

He was acutely, horribly aware of his condition. None of his limbs would move at his bidding. He was trapped inside the torture chamber of his mind. Help, he needed help…

"ROB," he croaked. "Help."

The ship computer, a small arm of ROB's consciousness, answered. "Voiceprint unidentified."

_Damn!_ Peppy cleared his throat as best he could, willing himself not to feel the ravages of death waiting with baited breath at his feet. "Peppy Hare speaking. Assistance to medical wing."

"Voiceprint unidentified."

Peppy coughed. His lungs forced the motion with difficulty and a ruptured vein pumped a trickle of blood into his otherwise dry throat. The plasma spluttered sickeningly out of Peppy's mouth and dribbled down his neck.

Was that how he had been treated on the Great Fox II? Had his shipmates already forgotten so utterly and completely about him that they had cleared his data from ROB's memory for an extra megabyte of space?

They forgot me. They forgot me. They forgot me…

Such were Peppy Hare's final thoughts. Death gently wet its fingers and pinched out the flame of Peppy's life. The body of the last member of the first Star Fox settled onto its stainless steel grave as his soul sought consolation with his old, betrayed shipmate.

Not much going on in this chapter, I know. I tried! I admit, I rushed this one a bit because I'm leaving home for a week starting tomorrow, and then back to school for Lord knows how long, and I'll have even less chance to write. I hope you people appreciate it.

Peace.

KSSE


	3. Chapter 3

Delirium Trigger 

Sorry for gaps between updates, my computer got stolen and I'm lazy yadda yadda yadda.

You may notice that I revised the first two chapters. Hoping it is more satisfactory.

I fought the decisions that call and lost; my mark has the relevant piece in this… I will come reformed! 

Coheed and Cambria: _The Crowing_

Chapter 3 

"Ahhh-_ugh_." Krystal nearly gagged as ROB jabbed the tongue depressor into her mouth. The robot was simultaneously shining a light in her ear.

After a few seconds, the slab of balsa wood was removed and the light was flicked off. ROB tacitly drew back, disposing of the used medical equipment and studying a rapidly appearing computer chart.

Krystal let her vision wander around the room, taking this near-silent moment to wonder what would happen next.

The other three were sealing off her quarters in every way they could think of and trying to find time to mourn their fallen companion in between outbursts of tense shouting and roaring power tools, and the occasional thump from inside the room.

Krystal didn't need her extrasensory methods to feel the heavy layer of distrust that was beginning to spread through wherever the remnants of the Star Fox team walked. It worried her. Psychological attacks, she knew better than most, were the most dangerous. They were the roots of the sapling of chaos. The aparoid was the sunlight.

What was the water? And where was the soil?

The answer, or part of it, shook her out of her silent reverie. "Miss Krystal. You are late."

She blinked. "Late? For what?"

There was a pause. "You mistake me. You are with child."

For a few seconds, Krystal went numb.

Then feeling came back to her in a whirling, disorienting rush of emotion and memory. The scent of hers and Fox's mingled passion touched at her nostrils as she saw him beside her, then a sudden acute awareness of the tight feeling in her belly jerked her attention to the present, then suddenly the pathways to the past shut as quickly as they had opened. She was sitting on the table again.

She inhaled deeply through her nose and let it out slowly in her mouth, praying that the oxygen would calm her seething mind. She couldn't let the others know about this. They would fall over themselves trying to keep her better protected and put themselves in danger more. There would be resentment toward her and Fox for having the gall to make love without contraception out here in the middle of nowhere.

On an impulse, she relaxed her body into a prone position, shutting her eyes and systematically removing her connection with the physical senses. She triggered a synapse in her mind that opened its awareness beyond the imagination of one who has not experienced it.

There were millions upon millions of existential doorways just beyond her reach into places and dimensions she had never known, past and present. Minds floated in her field of non-vision, distorted by the thoughts that transformed them. Some patterns she recognized, knew well enough to explore, others were locked mysteries.

She narrowed her mind a little and focused on willing herself through the gateway to this time, this place. The billions of minds was slimmed to only a few. There was a mind stretched taut, giving off emotional heat and still twisted in a spiral with tense feelings, anger and anxiety. Krystal saw the patterns of thought in the mind and searched for the encryption that would translate into the closest she could come to mind reading.

She found a fit. Instantly the jumbled signals became less vague emotions, and to an extent even vision and sound. But most important were the unspoken words that were heard as if they were thoughts of Krystal's own, within her head and nowhere else. They were thoughts of frustration and worry, and to only a slightly lesser extent concern for Krystal herself. Krystal found the doorway opened by the idea of her in the mind and followed it down thousands of hallways simultaneously to memories, hopes, thoughts and dreams, all about her. The mind undoubtedly belonged to fox.

She concentrated and ripped herself away from the mind, already missing the comfort it gave her. She focused harder, this time searching for a mind whose patterns she did not recognize.

She found one.

As soon as she began to explore the unfamiliar patterns, she realized that they were unfamiliar because they were on the verge of not existing. The usual deep-running jumbles of signals were in this case nothing but a few basic impulses that were not even acknowledged inside the mind itself. It had to be interpreted from an outsider.

It was the mind of Krystal's baby.

The mind reacted to its mothers touch, wrapping around it as a child's hand to a parent's finger. It explored the warmth brought by this new mind, and suddenly Krystal felt patterns in her own brain become sorted out and organized into something close to a level of understanding.

With a shock that broke the telepathic connection, Krystal realized: the child shared her power.

The possibilities danced in front of her eyes. Could it be a Cerinian child? With Fox's help, was it possible that she could restore the blue-violet vulpine line of her homeworld? No one knew if the genes that made a Cerinian so distinctive were dominant or recessive, as they had only bred among their own—recessive genes would have surfaced with almost the same frequency as dominant ones. If they _were_ dominant… who knew? An entire race could be rebuilt from the ashes…

In Krystal's excited musings, she failed to interpret something she had noticed.

During her telepathic search, she had looked for unfamiliar minds. She did not stop for a second to realize how odd it was that she had only found one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Delirium Trigger**

_A/N:_ I'm really starting to enjoy writing this. Chapter 3 was my favorite to write so far, as I wrote it a different way at first (Krystal tells Fox that she's pregnant and he gets angry at himself and her), but I didn't feel satisfied with the situation or my writing of it. So I changed it and moved into the next plot point. I actually have a fairly complex storyline worked out now that might involve a sequel, and is not exactly happy. But still.

_Slowly streets begin to fill with new flesh bound to bone… Armed and ready, it begins again_

Coheed and Cambria, _Cuts Marked in the March of Men_

**Chapter 4**

"Well, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure if you had survived." General Pepper crossed one leg over the other and swirled his drink around in his glass. "I would have sent out a search party straightaway, but replacing Star Fox's ship was the number one priority. I'm sure you understand."

"Oh, I understand perfectly, General. But that doesn't mean I'm not bitter."

Pepper hid a grimace in the leathery folds of his face. "I understand that. It was not our intention to leave you stranded."

"Oh, we weren't stranded. Just… severely inconvenienced."

The old hound cocked an eyebrow. "Interesting choice of words. Why so politically correct?"

"Forgive me if my impression that political correctness around politicians is important was wrong."

There was a mild hint of amusement in Pepper's voice. "Being, as you said, a politician, I should remind you that asking questions is part of my job."

"Answering them isn't part of mine." Deliberately, Wolf O'Donnell stood up and walked to the gigantic rocket- and laser-proof window that provided General Pepper's view of the city it was his duty to protect. "Come on, General, enough fencing with words. My team helped Star Fox deliver the self-destruct program to the queen, and I think it deserves some recognition."

"Certainly you do," Pepper agreed, "and it will be given. But not just yet."

Something in the hound's tone made Wolf flinch, but his paw traveled only slightly too slowly to the holster on his hip. His legs were tackled out from under him, and his limbs were pinned to the ground as an uncomfortable grip was placed on his tail.

"First," Pepper said in a tone that indicated complete control and comfort, "you're going to be grounded. You and your wingmates. The military has emphatically not forgotten your actions against Star Fox before. Second, you will…"

Wolf's features slid into a sadistic grin that would have been more fitting on the face of Leon. The old hound's list of punishments ran off his ears as his muscles tensed. The leopard guards holding him down felt the tightening under their footpaws and pressed harder.

Wolf shoved his limbs not feebly upward, but out rotating around his joints. The guards' pressures were redirected as their strong legs shot out from under them. Wolf dug his claws into the arms of the two now lying beside them and pushed himself into a quick handstand, bringing his feet back over his head. His strong, calloused footpaws smashed into the small of the back of the guard was holding his tail, and the leopard's knees buckled.

The actions were not lost on Pepper, who tried to backpedal to his desk and the safety of the high-powered blaster resting on it.

The leopard on Wolf's back crumpled as Wolf shifted his center of gravity outward, performing an astonishing handspring that took him over Pepper's head. The lupine held Pepper's arms quickly behind his back, locked another arm around his neck, and bent his knees into a kneeling position. The hound was rendered completely helpless.

"You will recognize my team and I, General," the aparoid queen hissed through Wolf's teeth. "But not in your current state. You will join us, and then we will see how much your useless bureaucracy is worth to us."

Pepper howled in a feral canine voice as Wolf's body, regenerated by the new aparoid queen, dug its fangs into his neck. A new gland in the queen's throat secreted liquid containing strands of the aparoid DNA, and they poured into the spreading wound on Pepper's neck. As soon as the slow-working venom was injected, the queen quickly licked away the blood, and trailed from its tongue a solution that cauterized and sealed the wound.

Pepper's breathing was ragged and he had become limp in the queen's chokehold. "Wolf…" he sputtered. "What have you done to me?"

The queen shaped its wolf's teeth into a grin. "I've led you over to the winning side." It tightened its grip on Pepper's neck, making it all the more simple to headbutt the hound into unconsciousness. Pepper's body needed to be alive for the few days it took to grow the new aparoid that would take his body and form.

Wolf, the aparoid queen, knew it was clichéd, but couldn't resist allowing itself a small evil chuckle before setting about infecting the unconscious guards. The aparoids had done what they did best. They had evolved.

A/N: I realize that in previous chapters I have referred to the aparoid aboard the Great Fox II as the queen. When I did that in the original part, I had the intention of the story going in a different direction. But I've changed that now. Slippy's claim in chapter 2 that the aparoid must be queen, well, that's just dramatic irony. I'm starting chapter 5 before I post this in order to second-guess anything I may want to change about this chapter.


End file.
